Thank you to everyone who has already completed the short Farmer Survey over the past several months. Below are the preliminary results.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please share your thoughts! Your opinion matters, and it only takes about 10 minutes. Plus, there’s one last $250 prize for respondents. (Congratulations Steve Fitch of Pocket Creek Farm for winning the first of two prizes!)

* New questions were added to the survey based on initial farmer responses. Results will be shared once we collect more data. If you already took the survey and wish to submit your responses to these new questions, you may do so here.

Farmers: We invite you to take the survey. It takes less than 15 minutes, and you could win $250!

Percentage of respondents with different farm acreage. For context, below is the USDA’s report on farm size and cropland distribution.

This USDA graph included for context only. The data has nothing to do with the CA farmer survey.

In the months that followed, I met individually with many of the folks above as well as other agriculture organization leaders to dig deeper into obstacles and opportunities in our shared sustainable agriculture ‘movement’, specifically regarding farm technical and business assistance. Realizing there is no standard language to describe this farm focus, we started using the term “Farm Education & Support Services”.

A summary of the sobering results is below. Overall, there is consensus that many fundamental components for our collective success are lacking, resulting in a disconnect among farmers, organizations, and funders; duplication of effort; lack of strategic focus in fundraising and program development; insufficient organizational capacity; few explicitly shared metrics of success; and a general feeling of “dysfunction” among various organizations.

And yet, of all the groups in the convening above, all but two expressed a willingness to work together in some form of a collective impact framework to systemically improve our effectiveness and impact. (If your agriculture organizations is interested, please contact me.)

We are planning to review the results of our co-designed Farmer Survey before deciding on next steps. So, a lot more to come. (Please do share the Farmer Survey with your networks if you haven’t already. Later, we’ll post the results for everyone here.)